黄耿志
, 张虹鸥
HUANG Gengzhi, ZHANG Hong'ou
版权声明: 2017 地理科学进展 《地理科学进展》杂志 版权所有
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作者简介:
作者简介：黄耿志(1986-),男,广东汕尾人,副研究员,主要从事城市化、非正规经济和劳动力研究,E-mail: hhhgz@126.com。
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摘要
与新古典工业区位论和新马克思主义经济地理学论将工人视为一种生产要素和抽象劳动力不同,劳工地理学将工人视为具有能动性的社会主体,研究工人如何按照自身的意愿创造有助于自身生存和再生产的空间。这种劳工认识论的转变在国际经济地理学界产生了极大和持续的反响,促使劳工地理学发展成为具有独特概念体系的经济地理子学科。本文梳理了近20年西方劳工地理学的研究进展,围绕工人能动性的概念、表现形式、形成机制以及它与空间、尺度、地方、全球生产网络之间的关系展开分析。最后基于劳工地理学前沿问题的分析,认为中国劳工地理研究应重点关注中国特色工会体制下工人能动性的构成、经济地理影响与形成的地域条件,并探索有助于社会升级的制度安排。开展劳工地理研究有助于拓展经济地理学的劳动力研究范畴,对认识中国市场经济深入发展时期面临的劳资矛盾和探索共享发展政策具有重要的现实意义。
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Abstract
Labor geography, which conceptualizes workers as social actors with agency rather than as a simple locational factor as seen in the neo-classical location theory, has become a thriving and important subfield of economic geography in the past two decades. However, labor geography received little attention in the literature of domestic economic geography despite the rising capital-labor contradiction having been challenging the marketization development in China. Attempting to provide a conceptual framework for the Chinese labor geography study, this article reviews the labor geography literature and identifies its emerging frontier questions. It first explains what labor geography is by examining the concept of worker agency and its spatiality. It then analyzes the progress of labor geography by focusing on the forms of worker agency and its formation mechanism, expounding their connections with space, place, global production networks, and social upgrading. The analyses show that labor geography has evolved from the narrow focus on collective forms of agency to the expanded one on variegated landscapes of agency that include worker individual social-spatial practices, and from the focus on the forms and influences of worker agency to the structurally territorial conditions that shape the possibilities of worker agency. It is suggested that there are four important issues for the Chinese labor geography study: (1) the variegated landscapes of worker agency in the context of the trade union institution with Chinese characteristics; (2) the potential impacts of labor agency on the restructuring of economic landscapes; (3) the embeddedness of worker agency in places where workers live and work in the context of China with specific institutional, economic, and social conditions; and (4) the institutional arrangements that contribute to social upgrading of workers. This article concludes by calling for the study of labor geography in China, which can provide a geographical perspective for understanding the Polanyian countermovement facing current China and policy implications for the inclusive development in the country.
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经历近40年的快速发展,中国当前不仅步入经济增长模式转变的发展攻坚时期,而且也面临着市场经济深入发展背景下日益凸显的劳资矛盾和社会治理挑战。一方面,产业结构调整、产业转移和技术升级(如机器换人)等正在对劳动力市场产生不确定的影响;另一方面,伴随劳工维权意识的增强,长期依赖廉价劳动力的工业化模式引发了日益增多的劳资争议和劳工抗争事件(蔡禾, 2010)。在2004-2014年的10年期间,全国劳工争议案件数增长1.75倍,从26.0万件增加到71.5万件(国家统计局人口和就业统计司等, 2016)。上述现象表明,中国市场经济发展正在面临波兰尼式“反向运动”的挑战(Friedman, 2013)。面对这个挑战,中国高层政府高度重视并积极响应,从胡锦涛主席的“和谐社会”理念到习近平主席的“共享发展”战略,无不显示出中国市场经济发展追求资本积累与社会主义价值观的辩证平衡(Huang et al, 2014)。在此政治经济背景下,如何认识各种形式的劳工抗争行为及其影响、最大限度化解劳资矛盾成为中国市场经济可持续发展面临的重要问题之一。
由Andrew Herod在1997年提出的劳工地理学①(①将“labor geography”翻译为劳工地理是为了突出作为社会行动者的工人对经济地理景观的塑造作用,区别于关注劳动力空间差异的劳动力地理(geography of labor)。),为地理学者介入这个领域提供了强有力的理论工具。劳工地理学批判了新古典区位论把劳工视为一种生产要素的视角,而将劳工视为与资本一样具有“空间修复”能力的社会和地理行动者,通过自身的社会空间实践,有意或无意地塑造资本主义经济景观。这种对劳工作用认识的转变在过去20年国际经济地理学界引起了广泛和持续的响应。相比之下,国内地理学仍主要基于新古典经济学的视角,研究作为一种区位因素的劳动力的空间分布与经济发展之间的关系(刘彦随等, 2010; 刘霄泉等, 2011; 俞万源, 2011; 王利伟等, 2014)②(②基本包括3个方面：产业发展与劳动力空间变化的相互关系,城市产业空间重构对劳动力分布的影响,农村经济与农村劳动力变化的关系。),对国际上蓬勃发展的劳工地理研究尚未给予应有的关注。为此,本文通过梳理国外劳工地理学的研究进展,以期为开启中国劳工地理研究和认识中国劳资矛盾问题提供理论基础,并基于劳工地理学前沿问题的分析探讨中国劳工地理研究的议题。
叶奇等(2004)、金利霞等(2013)曾在有关西方劳动力地理学的综述中提到劳工地理学,但主要关注点为地方劳动力市场管制,未能梳理以研究工人能动性为主旨的劳工地理学。两者虽然都是经济地理学研究劳动力的视角,但前者关注劳动力市场的社会管制或地方管控体制,分析对象不是劳工,而是一系列管控劳动力生产和再生产的社会和制度机制及其对劳动力市场的影响(Jonas, 1996; Peck, 1996)。与此相反,后者将劳工置于分析的中心,研究工人如何应对资本主导的结构性限制的能动性,已发展成为具有独特概念体系的经济地理学子学科。贺灿飞等(2014)将劳工地理学列为西方经济地理学8大研究热点之一,说明了其兴起的学科和现实基础,但没有系统梳理其研究进展和前沿问题,对劳工地理学关注什么、涉及哪些概念和理论尚不清楚。本文将围绕工人③(③本文对工人和劳工的交替使用没有本质的区别,在英文文献中,worker agency 和 labor agency的用法均存在。相对而言,劳工指工人的总体,一般使用于抽象的语境,与资本对应,如劳资关系;工人一般使用于具体的语境,如产业工人、建筑工人。工人能动性的使用也是为了突出工人作为具体的社会主体的意义。)能动性及其与空间、尺度、地方、全球生产网络的关系揭示劳工地理学的面貌。也是对蔡运龙等(2016)在“马克思主义地理学及其中国化”的讨论中呼吁开展中国劳工地理研究的一种响应。
经济地理学真正把劳动力问题置于学科分析的中心位置始于20世纪90年代中后期劳工地理学的提出。在新古典工业区位论中,劳工仅被当做与资本、原材料、设备一样的生产要素,其对经济活动的影响体现在不同地区的工资水平、工人技能的空间差异。劳工在经济地理分析中被简化为可计算的劳动力成本。新古典区位论所关注的是资本家如何根据劳动力的空间分布做出投资决策,以及这种分布差异如何影响资本主义经济地理。1970年代,新马克思主义经济地理开始兴起,与新古典区位论将空间视为均质“容器”不同,它强调空间与资本积累之间的关系,将空间的生产视为资本积累的条件与资本主义生产关系再生产的内在组成部分(Harvey, 1982; Massey, 1984）。然而,虽然不再将劳工视为简单的成本因素,并强调劳资关系对资本主义经济景观的塑造作用,但劳工仍然只是被当作一个具有交换价值的抽象劳动力和资本积累逻辑下的被动受害者(Coe et al, 2008)。换言之,资本不断通过“空间修复”的方式创造有助于其生产和再生产的特定空间,而劳工在这个过程中处于被动接受的地位。
新古典区位论和新马克思主义经济地理学的共同点在于从资本/企业的角度理解资本主义经济地理,而把劳工置于被动的边缘位置。Herod(1997a)认为以资本为中心的认识论是有局限的,因为它忽视了劳工在经济景观演变中的作用。他因此在1997年提出了劳工地理学(Labor Geography),以区别于将劳工视为生产要素的劳动力地理学(Geography of Labor)。劳工地理学的目标是研究工人如何根据自身的利益和需求以某种特定的方式创造有利于自身生存和再生产的空间,尽管这个过程处于资本主导之下。劳工被视为与资本一样具有“空间修复”能力的社会主体,通过自身的社会和空间实践有意或无意地塑造经济景观。这种对劳工的重新理解在本体论上获得马克思主义底层历史学派和自治马克思主义学派的支撑,两者均强调工人阶级在资本主义历史发展中的重要作用(Cumbers et al, 2010)。但这并非否定资本的作用,而是试图从劳工的角度理解资本主义经济地理。正如Herod(1997a)所说,如果新古典区位论是一种理解资本家空间行为的理论,劳工地理学则是地理学者认识工人社会空间行为的理论工具。
Herod的研究提议在国际经济地理学界引起了巨大响应,并在Castree(2007)、Coe(2013)、Peck(2017)等著名经济地理学者的推动下取得显著的进展。为了更好地理解这些成果,我们先总结劳工地理学的核心概念—工人能动性以及其所具有的空间性。这种空间性既表明空间、地方、尺度对劳资争斗的影响,也体现了地理学研究劳工问题不同于其他学科的独特视角。实际上,劳工地理学的基本目标就是构建一个空间视角的工人能动性理论。
2.2.1 工人能动性的概念与类型
能动性是一个与结构相对应的概念。在Herod(1997a)的开拓性论文中,工人能动性指在资本主义社会结构下,工人按照自身的意愿和需求而采取的有助于改善自身生存和再生产条件的行动或策略。随着研究的推进,能动性被进一步划分为对应不同效应的3种类型(Coe et al, 2011)：①适应/弹性(Resilience),指工人以应付现状或困境为目的的微观实践,不改变既定的劳资关系;②重制(Reworking),指反对现存的劳资关系,以寻求资源再分配和改善物质条件的行动;③抵抗(Resistance),指直接挑战和颠覆资本主义社会生产关系,获得对自身劳动力和时间的自由支配。显然,最后一种能动性在当今世界几乎不可能发生。因此,劳工地理学所指的工人能动性包括适应和重制,前者一般涉及工人个体隐蔽的和日常的行为(如偷懒、迁移、换工、兼职等),后者包括工人的个体行为(如投诉、上访等)和集体行动(如罢工、抗议等)。
2.2.2 工人能动性的空间性
工人能动性的空间性体现在以下4个方面。一是行动条件的地域性。所有工人都因为家庭、居住和工作的关系而嵌入特定空间,这不仅影响工人行动的空间目标,而且使行动的可能性受到其所在地方的制度、经济、社会关系和物质空间形态的影响(Herod, 2003; Coe, 2013)。前者如强烈依恋地方的工人群体会倾向于采取保护地方经济的行动,以确保自身的就业和福利,尽管这可能会造成对其他地方工人同胞的损害;后者如工会制度的不完善使特定地方的工人缺失集体力量,而只能采取个体化的行为方式。
二是行动目标的空间尺度。由于工人再生产的空间嵌入性,工人行动的目标常常面临空间尺度的抉择。以特定行业的工资谈判为例,将有3种空间层次的目标：在全国范围实行统一的工资水平、根据不同地方的生活成本实行地方差别化的工资水平、实行与企业经营情况挂钩的工资水平(Herod, 1997b, 2003)。不同空间目标的选择将影响到行动的策略、过程以及最终的效果。
三是行动的尺度政治抑或工人的空间策略。包括2类：①跨地方行动,包括在国际、国家和国家次区域尺度的工人跨地迁移,以及利用工会网络寻求跨地方的工人阶层联结;②具有跨地方影响力的地方行动,包括工场尺度的抗议行动、多工场联合的抗议行动,以及工会与社区组织(如女权组织、志愿者组织、环保组织等)合作的跨阶层联合行动(Lier, 2007)。
四是工人行动效应的空间性。表现在3个方面(Castree et al, 2004; Rainnie et al, 2011)：①尺度效应。工人行动可在地方、区域、国家和全球等产生不同尺度的影响,对资方造成不同程度的压力;②牛鞭效应(Bullwhip Effect)。工人在某一地方发起的行动(如停工)可导致其所在的整个生产网络的瘫痪(尤其对全球生产网络而言),进而影响其他地方节点的正常生产秩序;③正义的地理困境。某一地方的工人行动所获得的利益可能损害其他地方工人的福利。例如,B地工人阻止企业将生产任务外包给A地或阻止企业迁移至A地的行动,将导致A地工人工作机会的减少和福利受损。这个困境反映了当今经济全球化背景下工人阶层之间相互影响、相互依赖的地理关系。综上,工人能动性从其形成条件、目标、表现到效应均体现了空间性,下文将进一步解释这种空间性。
劳工地理学基本上经历了1990年代的建立期到2000年以后的扩展期,在此期间分别在2007年和2011年经历了2次深刻反思,这2次反思极大推动了劳工地理学的发展。图1刻画了过去20年劳工地理学的发展脉络,显示它在工人能动性的概念、表现形式、形成机制以及所涉及的概念、经济部门、地域背景等方面的深化和拓展,表现在：从只关注工会行动的单一能动性到关注包括个体和集体行为在内的多样化能动性,从只关注能动性的表现拓展至能动性的形成条件,从只关注制造业工人拓展至农业和服务业工人,从只关注发达国家拓展至发展中国家。劳工地理学通过与能动性、全球生产网络、地方劳动力管控体制等理论的交叉,推动上述拓展和完善概念体系。此外,在方法论上,不同于劳动力地理学主要采用数量统计方法揭示劳动力的空间格局,劳工地理学关注劳工影响经济地理过程的具体方式和因果机制,因而一般使用民族志、访谈、档案分析、案例(事件)分析等质性研究方法(Herod, 2000a)。
图1 西方劳工地理学的发展脉络(1997-2016) 说明：① 根据近20年主要的劳工地理研究文献梳理而成,其中对研究主题的划分综合参考
Fig.1 Progress in the Western labor geography (1997-2016)
工会对企业行为的制约是劳工塑造资本主义经济地理的主要表现(Herod, 2000a),也是劳工地理学提出初期对工人能动性研究的重点,通常关注工会活动活跃的发达国家。研究论证了工人如何借助工会力量发起地方性和跨地方性的集体行动来阻止资本作出的不利于劳方的行为,如降低工资、外包生产任务、区位转移;或促进资本作出有利于劳方的行为,如改善工作环境、提高工资等,从而影响资本主义经济景观的塑造和改善自身再生产的条件(Aguiar et al, 2009; Mills et al, 2009; Tufts et al, 2009; Gialis et al, 2014)。典型的研究如,Herod(2000b)分析了美国通用汽车公司弗林特市金属冲压厂工人通过工会组织的地方性罢工致使生产系统瘫痪,并进而导致承担其他生产任务的其他工厂停工或关闭,最后促使通用公司兑现改善工作环境的承诺。Cumbers等(2016)研究了英国林赛炼油厂工会如何利用全国化工行业的工会网络发起跨地方的罢工行动,以阻止公司将生产订单分包给廉价的外地企业的全球化策略。这类研究关注在全球生产分散化的背景下,如何促进工会的组建与创新劳工实践方式,强调通过尺度政治的运用增强集体行动的力量,以应对资本全球化对劳工产生的不利影响,其策略包括在国际、国家和区域尺度上的跨地方联合行动和具有跨地方影响力的地方性行动。认为经济全球化在使资本获得更大范围的空间流动能力并由此削弱劳工力量的同时,也赋予劳工能动性新的潜力和可能性。这个结论激发了劳工地理与全球生产网络研究的对话,我们将在后文继续讨论这一点。
虽然工会是工人能动性的重要表现,但1970年代以来新自由主义政策的实施已使工会力量遭到削弱。与此同时,经济组织模式由福特主义向后福特主义的转变产生了大量临时的、短期的和不稳定的工作,导致工作场所与雇佣关系在组织上和地理上的碎片化(Dicken, 2003),使得传统工会组织陷入困境。在此背景下,越来越多的学者关注被称为社区—工会主义(Community Unionism)的能动性,它强调的不是尺度的跃升,而是尺度的在地强化,即工人群体或工会如何基于共同的意愿和目标联合其他市民社会团体发起跨阶层的地方行动,由此造成巨大的舆论压力促成目标的实现(Castree, 2000; Waterman et al, 2001; Wills, 2001; Lier et al, 2006)。许多案例研究分析了工会如何将劳工议题与环境保护、性别歧视、身份认同、种族偏见等城市社会议题建立联系,从而与环保组织、女权组织、同性恋团体、少数族裔团体等社会团体形成阶层联盟(Pastor, 2001; Sadler, 2003; Jepson, 2005; Smith, 2015),由此推动社会公正和资源再分配的目标。社区—工会主义为传统的工会提供了新的组织尺度,使工会力量得以覆盖工作不稳定、空间分散的工人群体(Jordhus-Lier, 2013),尤其是清洁工、保姆、保安等城市低端服务业工人。社区—工会主义因此被认为是当前新自由主义政治经济背景下工会创新组织策略、增强工人能动性的重要途径 (Atzeni, 2016)。在这个意义上,社区—工会主义构成了Tufts(2009)所说的“熊彼特式工会主义”的当前形态,后者刻画了在不断变化的政治经济环境下出现的介于纯行业工会行动与社会运动之间的类工会行动。
2007年,Castree(2007)和Lier(2007)不约而同地对劳工地理学进行了第一次深刻反思,认为过去10年(1997-2007)的劳工地理研究过度关注工会,在理论上将能动性等同于集体行动、在经验上集中在发达国家,而忽视了缺乏工会组织的个体化工人,导致对能动性概念理论化的欠缺。这次反思推动了对发展中国家工人能动性的研究与能动性概念的重新审视。许多学者开始关注在工会组织缺失的条件下,个体工人如何通过各种微观的、隐蔽的策略应对资本积累逻辑。最先响应的是Rogaly(2009)对印度卡特瓦农业工人的研究,它揭示了个体移民工人如何通过迁移、谈判和自雇佣的方式改善自身的再生产条件。后来对椰子采摘业(Sportel, 2013)、建筑业(Berntsen, 2016)、呼叫服务业(James et al, 2012)、文化产业(Warren, 2014)等工人的案例研究进一步揭示了个体工人多种多样的社会空间实践,包括利用社会关系形成自助网络,利用已有的工作经验跳槽实现向上流动,换工以躲避苛刻的劳动体制,兼职以改善收入状况,利用劳动力短缺状况或自身劳动技能与企业讨价还价,组成小团体以增加谈判的权力等。不同于集体行动的跨地方尺度,这些个体实践渗入工场、社区、家庭等微观尺度的劳动过程和日常生活领域,体现了Scott(1985)所提出的“弱者的武器”。研究认为,个体化能动性虽然不能改变劳资关系,但以微小、渐进的方式改善工人的工作和生活处境,对资本主义组织和劳动过程产生间接的影响,对理解经济全球化背景下发展中国家的工人能动性、经济转型和劳资关系变化具有重要意义(Hasting, 2016)。对个体化能动性的研究推动了劳工地理与能动性理论的对话,促进了工人能动性概念的完善,体现在Coe等运用吉登斯的结构化理论与Katz的能动性理论重新审视工人能动性概念,并将其具体化为适应、重制和抵抗3种基本类型,实现了集体和个体能动性在概念上的统一(Coe et al, 2011, 2013)。此概念已成为当前劳工地理研究的基本分析框架,推动学者共同致力于揭示适应和重制2类能动性的表现形式及其影响。
2011年和2013年,Coe在《Progress in Human Geography》连续撰文对劳工地理学进行了第二次反思(Coe et al, 2011; Coe, 2013),认为劳工地理学对工人能动性的表现形式已取得长足的研究进展,然而研究忽视了影响这些能动性形式及其效应的结构性因素,值得深思的问题是：如何理解一个地方的工人能动性的表现形式?为什么有些能动性在某些地方存在并取得效果,而在某些地方则出现相反的结果?Coe(2013)认为工人能动性不是独立地存在,而是受全球生产网络(GPN)的影响,并嵌入工人所在地方的特定制度、经济和社会关系中的社会空间实践。这一主张得到学界的积极响应,并激发了劳工地理学与全球生产网络和地方劳动力管控体制(Local Labour Control Regime, LLCR)理论的对话。
3.4.1 全球生产网络对能动性的影响
全球生产网络既制约又促进工人的能动性。制约主要体现在(Herod et al, 2007; Ruwanpura, 2016)：①全球生产网络使资本减少对特定地方劳动力的依赖,削弱工人或工会的力量;②生产分包模式造成地理分散的劳动空间与非正规的雇佣关系,削弱工人组织的物质条件;③全球市场的低迷或竞争加剧会使地方企业实施更加严格的劳动管理,使工人更难获得资本的让步。
促进主要体现在：①国际生产商或购买商要求地方企业采取符合其企业社会责任(CSR)的工作规范和准则,如遵守当地劳动合同法,8小时工作制和最低工资线等(Lund-Thomsen et al, 2015);②工人在GPN的位置使其获得结构性权力(Selwyn, 2012),包括：一是基于生产环节的权力,指处在关键生产环节节点的工人,其罢工或停工可影响整个生产网络的正常运行——即牛鞭效应,意味着工人虽然被局限于地方,并被生产分散化所分割,但只要在某个战略性的生产节点发起行动,就可以制约整个生产网络,获得与资本谈判的筹码。例如,Bollhorn等(2016)分析了德国一家汽车制造企业工人如何利用汽车生产网络的弱点反对企业被收购,最终使企业收回资本重组的决策。二是基于劳动市场的权力,指在劳动力短缺的条件下,企业难以找到替代的劳动力,工人在谈判中占据主动和优势地位。例如：Kiil等(2016)分析了瑞典护士如何通过拒绝入职和离职造成当地护士供给陷入短缺,从而推动护士入职工资的提高;Guthman(2017)对美国加州草莓种植业的研究则发现,劳动力短缺增强了种植工人的谈判权力,但企业也可通过技术改进来削弱这种权力。
3.4.2 能动性的地方条件
全球生产网络对工人能动性的影响最终通过地方因素而起作用。例如,在劳动监管不足的地方,跨国企业对当地企业的CSR要求很难被落实;工人在全球生产网络中的结构性权力也需通过集体行动才能发挥应有作用,而后者能否实现则依赖于地方的劳工管制。因此,工人能动性的形成与地方劳动力管控体制④(④ 地方劳动力管控体制指在特定历史时期下,嵌入特定地方的一系列调节生产、工作、消费和劳动力再生产之间的相互作用的机制。)密切相关(Riisgaard et al, 2011)。研究发现,工人能动性受到地方劳工制度/政策、政府态度、劳动力市场特征、企业雇佣策略、性别观念、社会等级、家庭分工等制度、经济和社会因素的影响(Carswell et al, 2013; Lund-Thomsen, 2013; Hauge et al, 2016)。例如,Lund-Thomsen(2013)以巴基斯坦耐克足球制造工人为例,揭示了处于不同生产网络类型的工人能动性如何受到当地性别化的劳动力市场、企业雇佣模式、工人职住距离等因素的影响。Carswell等(2013)对印度服装出口制造业的研究显示,工人能动性受到当地种性制度、性别观念和家庭生计模式的影响。例如,种性等级促进了高等级工人的能动性,而制约了低等级工人的能动性;家庭分工制约了已婚女工的就业实践,使其只能选择灵活的小作坊工作。这些研究表明,对工人能动性的理解必须将其置于其所在地方的特定生产和再生产地理中。工人能动性与地方是辩证的关系,工人发挥其能动性创造有助于自身再生产的地方,而地方则塑造了工人的能动性。
以资本为中心的经济地理研究常常通过经济升级而介入政策话语。近年来,劳工地理学者开始从社会升级的角度思考劳工地理学的政策出口。Barrientos等(2011)区别了经济升级和社会升级的概念：经济升级指企业从低附加值生产进入高附加值生产,并伴随技术改进、利润增加和竞争力提升的过程;社会升级则指劳动者的工作机会增加、工作质量提高和劳动权利改善的过程。目前,经济地理学者主要关注企业的经济升级,认为经济升级将自动地带来社会升级。然而,劳工地理研究发现,经济升级不一定带来社会升级(Rossi, 2013),甚至在某种情况下会导致社会降级,因为社会升级不仅受企业因素的影响,而且受宏观政策、劳工制度、劳动者和其他社会主体等多种因素的共同作用(Pyke et al, 2016)。Selwyn(2013)深刻地指出,经济升级可转化为社会升级,但需要合适的制度安排充当媒介作用,而这种制度安排不是自然形成的,而是劳资权力关系的产物。换言之,经济升级能否转化为社会升级在很大程度上取决于劳资权力关系的平衡以及这种平衡如何被制度化。因此,对劳工地理研究而言,重要的问题是如何通过研究工人能动性对劳资关系的影响,探索有助于促进经济升级转化为社会升级的劳资权力关系及其制度化机制,从而促进企业和工人共享经济发展的成果。
从劳工地理研究的发展脉络分析中可识别以下3个前沿问题。一是探索多样化的工人能动性。虽然工会是工人能动性的重要表现,但越来越多的研究关注工会力量缺失或薄弱条件下的个体形式能动性,因为后者不仅在发展中国家广泛存在,而且在新自由主义和后福特主义的政治经济环境下变得更加普遍。Peck、Coe等经济地理学者为此呼吁发展一种多样化、细腻化的能动性概念,以捕捉集体/个体的、正规/非正规的、短暂/持续的以多种形式存在、在多个空间尺度展开的工人能动性(Coe, 2015; Peck, 2017)。正如Peck(2013)所总结的,我们需要发展劳工地理学的“地理学”,而不只是关注发达国家。二是探索形塑工人能动性的地域条件。不同于社会学者,地理学者的任务不仅要识别工人能动性的表现形式,而且需要揭示这些能动性为何如此以及可能的地域因素。Coe(2015)因此提出了“多样化的能动性景观(Variegated Landscapes of Agency)”概念,以理解在特定历史时期(特定政治经济结构下)特定地方的工人群体如何创造有助于自身再生产的社会空间,以及这个过程如何受到地方制度、经济和社会因素的影响。三是通过研究工人应对资本积累逻辑的能动性,揭示劳资权力关系变化的动力,以探索更加平衡的劳资权力关系和有助于社会升级的制度安排。
基于上述前沿问题,中国劳工地理研究应重点关注以下4个方面。
(1) 研究中国特色工会体制下工人能动性的构成。虽然中国建立了工会制度,但在现阶段工会的作用较为有限,特别在民营企业,工会大多受到资方影响,在维护劳工利益方面未能发挥有效的作用。在这种背景下,中国工人采取哪些社会空间策略应对资本积累逻辑和改善自身再生产的条件?需要研究集体行动(如停工、抗议)发生的机制以及在社区、工场、家庭等微观尺度并渗入社会再生产领域的个体化工人的社会空间实践,如迁移、回流家乡、兼职、自雇佣、求助草根组织等。
(2) 研究工人能动性产生的经济地理影响。国内地理学者目前主要将劳动力视为一种生产要素,研究经济空间变化对劳动力空间的影响。然而,劳工地理研究表明,劳工作为能动的社会主体也对经济空间变化产生作用。值得研究的是,以集体和个体形式存在的工人社会空间实践(包括停工、劳资争议事件、个体抗争行为等)具有什么样的经济地理影响,如对地方劳动力市场、投资环境、产业转移的影响以及对其他地方工人工作和生活的影响等。这将有助于从劳工的视角理解中国正在发生的经济转型和空间重构。
(3) 研究中国工人能动性景观形成的地域因素。在考虑经济全球化因素的影响下,揭示中国工人的能动性如何嵌入其特定的制度、经济和社会关系之中。制度因素如劳工制度、户籍制度、就业政策、产业政策、政府态度等,经济因素如企业对跨国公司CSR的响应、企业新生产技术的应用(如“机器换人”会减少对劳动力的依赖)、劳动力供需状况、劳动力市场中介等;社会因素如社会网络(如同乡关系)、社交媒体的使用(如微信/网络论坛)、草根组织、工人居住模式(社区居住/工厂宿舍居住)、媒体力量等。
(4) 探索有助于经济升级促进社会升级的制度安排。通过研究工人能动性对劳资权力关系变化的作用机制,探索符合当前体制的、更加平衡的劳资权力关系,从劳工的视角寻求有助于促进经济升级转化为社会升级的制度安排,实现企业效益和工人福利的平衡发展,从而为减少劳资矛盾、推动社会稳定和共享发展提供地理学视角的政策依据。
劳工地理学致力于从空间的视角研究工人能动性的表现形式、影响与形成条件,并探索有助于工人社会升级的劳资权力关系。它关注特定地域条件下工人如何应对和挑战资本积累逻辑,以及由此造成的对经济景观的潜在影响。劳工地理学的蓬勃发展不仅与1970年代以来新自由主义和经济全球化对工作空间和劳资关系产生的深刻影响有关,而且源于其为地理学者推动社会公正提供了一个理论工具。西方劳工地理学的概念体系将有助于我们开展中国背景下的劳工地理研究。不仅对目前国内地理学主要将劳动力视为一种生产要素的劳工研究形成理论视角的补充,从而拓展学科研究范畴,而且对认识中国市场经济深入发展时期面临的劳资矛盾和探索共享发展政策具有重要的现实意义。
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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20世纪80年代以来,西方经济地理学与经济学、政治学、社会学、管理学等社会科学广泛融合,呈现出空前繁荣的局面。本文对这一时期西方经济地理学的思潮演变、热点研究领域以及政策研究等方面进行梳理。西方经济地理学在经历了地理学的“新经济地理学”和经济学的“新经济地理学”两个影响深远的变革后,研究领域和主题逐步走向多样化与复杂化。本文综述了8个热点研究领域,包括区域与地方发展、经济全球化、产业地理、劳动力地理、创新与创意地理、消费地理、环境经济地理和金融地理的研究进展,并讨论了经济地理学与政策研究的关系,最后总结了西方经济地理学的特点。
Progress of economic geography in the West: A literature review [J].https://doi.org/10.11821/dlxb201408014 URL 摘要
20世纪80年代以来,西方经济地理学与经济学、政治学、社会学、管理学等社会科学广泛融合,呈现出空前繁荣的局面。本文对这一时期西方经济地理学的思潮演变、热点研究领域以及政策研究等方面进行梳理。西方经济地理学在经历了地理学的“新经济地理学”和经济学的“新经济地理学”两个影响深远的变革后,研究领域和主题逐步走向多样化与复杂化。本文综述了8个热点研究领域,包括区域与地方发展、经济全球化、产业地理、劳动力地理、创新与创意地理、消费地理、环境经济地理和金融地理的研究进展,并讨论了经济地理学与政策研究的关系,最后总结了西方经济地理学的特点。
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西方现代劳动力地理学研究进展及对中国研究的意义 [J].
Progress in the study of modern labour geography in Western countries and the significance for China [J].
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| [6] |
北京市就业密度分布的空间特征 [J].Research on the spatial structure of employment distribution in Beijing [J]. |
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中国县域耕地与农业劳动力变化的时空耦合关系 [J].https://doi.org/10.11821/xb201012015 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
利用1996年、2000年和2005年中国县域耕地与农业劳动力数据,基于GIS技术和模型方法,分析了县域耕地面积与农业劳动力变化态势及其时空耦合特征.研究表明:①县域耕地面积和农业劳动力变化均呈先增后减态势.1996-2000年,耕地总量、劳动力数量分别增长2.70%和1.40%;2000-2005年,耕地总量、劳动力数量分别减少1.51%和8.18%.②"胡焕庸线"是刻画中国耕地和劳动力变化格局的重要分界线.沿此线带状区域内因退耕还林造成耕地快速减少,而农业劳动力转移滞后;其西北部区域耕地快速增加,农业劳动力也在增长;其东南部区域耕地明显减少,而农业劳动力减少速度更快,二者呈现协调态势.③耕地非农化进程中县域劳动力转移效率呈下降趋势.1996-2000年和2000-2005年,全国分别有447个和505个县域的耕地减少和劳动力转移呈良性变化,90%的县域劳耕弹性系数(LFEC)的中位数分别为4.58和2.97.④基于SOM自组织特征映射神经网络聚类方法,可将1996-2005年中国县域耕地与劳动力变化的耦合特征划分为9大类型区.多情景模拟分析表明,2005-2015年的LFEC趋势值为2.55.
Spatio-temporal coupling relationship between farmland and agricultural labor changes at county level in China [J].https://doi.org/10.11821/xb201012015 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
利用1996年、2000年和2005年中国县域耕地与农业劳动力数据,基于GIS技术和模型方法,分析了县域耕地面积与农业劳动力变化态势及其时空耦合特征.研究表明:①县域耕地面积和农业劳动力变化均呈先增后减态势.1996-2000年,耕地总量、劳动力数量分别增长2.70%和1.40%;2000-2005年,耕地总量、劳动力数量分别减少1.51%和8.18%.②"胡焕庸线"是刻画中国耕地和劳动力变化格局的重要分界线.沿此线带状区域内因退耕还林造成耕地快速减少,而农业劳动力转移滞后;其西北部区域耕地快速增加,农业劳动力也在增长;其东南部区域耕地明显减少,而农业劳动力减少速度更快,二者呈现协调态势.③耕地非农化进程中县域劳动力转移效率呈下降趋势.1996-2000年和2000-2005年,全国分别有447个和505个县域的耕地减少和劳动力转移呈良性变化,90%的县域劳耕弹性系数(LFEC)的中位数分别为4.58和2.97.④基于SOM自组织特征映射神经网络聚类方法,可将1996-2005年中国县域耕地与劳动力变化的耦合特征划分为9大类型区.多情景模拟分析表明,2005-2015年的LFEC趋势值为2.55.
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| [8] |
传统农区外出劳动力回流意愿与规划响应: 基于河南周口市问卷调查数据 [J].https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2014.07.014 URL Magsci [本文引用: 1] 摘要
以产业转移和劳动力回流为主要特征的“双转移”是当前中国经济进入中速增长背景下一个新的发展趋势，是市场机制下产业和劳动力的理性选择。在此背景下，以河南周口市为案例地，通过实地调研和问卷访谈，分析了传统农区外出劳动力空间流向和回流意愿，重点对外出劳动力的回流动力、行为选择进行了调查分析，并从政府和制度层面提出回流地的规划响应。结果表明：①周口市外出劳动力回流意愿强烈，且有近期返乡的打算；②外出劳动力的回流动力呈现多元化，县城是除本村外回流劳动力居住和生活的重要空间选择；③就业机会、教育和医疗水平是外出劳动力回流最为关注的城镇吸引要素。最后，从地方政府和制度层面提出放权强县、促进“双转移”良性循环互动、公共服务设施均等化配置和推进土地户籍制度改革的规划响应措施。
Return intention of migrant workers in a traditional agricultural area and planning response: Based on a questionnaire survey in Zhoukou, Henan Province [J].https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2014.07.014 URL Magsci [本文引用: 1] 摘要
以产业转移和劳动力回流为主要特征的“双转移”是当前中国经济进入中速增长背景下一个新的发展趋势，是市场机制下产业和劳动力的理性选择。在此背景下，以河南周口市为案例地，通过实地调研和问卷访谈，分析了传统农区外出劳动力空间流向和回流意愿，重点对外出劳动力的回流动力、行为选择进行了调查分析，并从政府和制度层面提出回流地的规划响应。结果表明：①周口市外出劳动力回流意愿强烈，且有近期返乡的打算；②外出劳动力的回流动力呈现多元化，县城是除本村外回流劳动力居住和生活的重要空间选择；③就业机会、教育和医疗水平是外出劳动力回流最为关注的城镇吸引要素。最后，从地方政府和制度层面提出放权强县、促进“双转移”良性循环互动、公共服务设施均等化配置和推进土地户籍制度改革的规划响应措施。
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西方经济地理学对劳动力问题的研究进展 [J].https://doi.org/10.3321/j.issn:0375-5444.2004.z1.026 URL 摘要
劳动力问题因为其日益增强的空间性和地域差异性,已经稳定地成为现代西方经济地理学的一个重要研究对象.本文首先简要回顾西方经济地理学对劳动力问题研究的几个主要阶段,进而介绍其主要研究方法和相关理论,最后根据西方经济地理学在劳动力问题上的主要研究议题提出对我国地方劳动力市场研究的启示.
Progress in the study of labor issues by economic geographers in Western countries [J].https://doi.org/10.3321/j.issn:0375-5444.2004.z1.026 URL 摘要
劳动力问题因为其日益增强的空间性和地域差异性,已经稳定地成为现代西方经济地理学的一个重要研究对象.本文首先简要回顾西方经济地理学对劳动力问题研究的几个主要阶段,进而介绍其主要研究方法和相关理论,最后根据西方经济地理学在劳动力问题上的主要研究议题提出对我国地方劳动力市场研究的启示.
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基于产业协调的“双转移”战略背景下广东欠发达山区劳动力转移分析: 以梅州市为例 [J].
运用产业结构偏离度和协同系数分析方法,以梅州市为例,从产业协调发展角度,分析"双转移"战略背景下欠发达山区劳动力转移特征。分析认为:欠发达山区实施"双转移"战略必须坚持承接产业转移与劳动力转移同步,并加速劳动力转移,"异地迁移、本地转移、异地回流"是产业转移背景下的欠发达山区劳动力转移新模式。提高劳动力转移能力、增强劳动力转移吸引力是加速欠发达山区劳动力转移的关键。
Labour transfer in less-developed mountainous areas of Guangdong under context of "Industry and Labour Transfer" strategy based on industry coordination: Taking Meizhou City as an example [J].
运用产业结构偏离度和协同系数分析方法,以梅州市为例,从产业协调发展角度,分析"双转移"战略背景下欠发达山区劳动力转移特征。分析认为:欠发达山区实施"双转移"战略必须坚持承接产业转移与劳动力转移同步,并加速劳动力转移,"异地迁移、本地转移、异地回流"是产业转移背景下的欠发达山区劳动力转移新模式。提高劳动力转移能力、增强劳动力转移吸引力是加速欠发达山区劳动力转移的关键。
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The geographies of the justice for janitors [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.012 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
On the heels of the successes of its Justice for Janitors (J4J) model to organize cleaners in the United States, the Service Employees International Union is exporting this model to Canada and Australia. In this article we examine the geographies of the implementation of the J4J model in these two contexts. And while the “ramping up” of the J4J to the globe makes sense to organize an increasingly globalizing cleaning industry, the model must nonetheless pay attention to the local scale and histories of existing organizations.
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Beyond trade unions' strategy: The social construction of precarious workers organizing in the city of Buenos Aires [J].https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2016.1086537 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
The paper presents preliminary findings of qualitative research, case study based, on the organization and collective mobilization of two groups of precarious workers in the city of Buenos Aires. Contrary to research that looks at trade unions’ institutional strategies for organizing precarious workers and at workers’ responses to these, the article starts with a bottom-up approach centred on workers’ self-activity. This helps to show empirically how a complex net of structural and contextual factors, which includes the spatial organization of the labour process, the institutional and legal framework and the socio-political context, creates material circumstances that generate processes of workers’ association. This approach is rooted in long-standing theoretical debates about the structuring of workers’ collective interests and action and helps to ground debates on the perspectives of precarious workers’ organization within the context of currently and locally existing capitalist relations rather than in more abstracted trade unions’ strategies and responses.
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Economic and social upgrading in global production networks: A new paradigm for a changing world [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2011.00119.x URL 摘要
Abstract. A key challenge in promoting decent work worldwide is how to improve the position of both firms and workers in value chains and global production networks driven by lead firms. This article develops a framework for analysing the linkages between the economic upgrading of firms and the social upgrading of workers. Drawing on studies which indicate that firm upgrading does not necessarily lead to improvements for workers, with a particular focus on the Moroccan garment industry, it outlines different trajectories and scenarios to provide a better understanding of the relationship between economic and social upgrading.
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Reworking labour practices: On the agency of unorganized mobile migrant construction workers [J].https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017015617687 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
In an attempt to probe the nuanced processes of non-unionization, this article analyses the agency of migrant construction workers and the ways they negotiate and navigate an increasingly flexible and pan-European labour market. Drawing upon qualitative interview data, the article argues that the precarious employment context limits opportunities for effective collective action (and unionization), and that workers employ a wide range of strategies to 0900get by0964 and 0900get ahead0964 instead. This analysis contributes to an understanding of the resilience of current employment relations by extending the discussion of agency with the category of reworking. Instead of challenging the way cross-border employment relations are organized, migrant construction workers employ various strategies that rework existing conditions to their advantage. On a broader scale, however, these practices contribute to the continuation of current employment relations.
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Production network knowledge as a foundation for resistance: Workers influence on a Chinese acquisition in Germany [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12164 URL 摘要
Abstract This paper analyses how workers in Germany's automotive industry developed power in the process of a transnational carve out 鈥 namely the carve-out of the rubber and plastics department of the German automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG to the Chinese based Zhuzhou Times New Material Technology Co., Ltd. in 2013. The worker's actions were successful because they used their production network knowledge and decided against a strategy of pure co-operative co-determination but implemented a strategy of resistance. They concentrated their resistance on the weak points within the value creation processes of the automotive production network. On the basis of this, the authors argue that production network knowledge can be used to develop collective power within organisations. The study is based on qualitative interviews with ZF observing participation of workers events and a press analyses on the particular acquisition.
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Labouring for global markets: Conceptualising labour agency in global production networks [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.06.008 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This article starts with the recognition that labour has received less than its fair share of empirical and analytical attention in scholarship on global production networks. Little is known about how jobs for export markets fit into workers’ wider livelihoods strategies, or how workers react to new employment opportunities available to them. Based on evidence from the Tiruppur garment cluster in Tamil Nadu, South India, the article takes labourers, their livelihoods and their social reproduction as its starting point. It reviews relevant labour geography and GPN literature, and suggests that labour agency has been almost solely conceptualised in terms of collective forms of organised worker resistance. The article then draws on material from South India to examine how people enter garment work as well as the multiple and everyday forms of agency they engage in. We follow a ‘horizontal’ approach that accounts for gender, age, caste and regional connections in the making and constraining of agency. Such an approach reveals how labour agency is not merely fashioned by vertically linked production networks but as much by social relations and livelihood strategies that are themselves embedded in a wider regional economy and cultural environment. The article argues that labour’s multiple and everyday forms of agency not only help to shape local developments of global capitalism but also to produce transformative effects on workers’ livelihoods, social relations and reproductive capacities.
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Geographic scale and grass-roots internationalism: The Liverpool Dock dispute, 1995-1998 [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2000.tb00144.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
In the context of ongoing debates over the effects of “globalization” on organized labor and, specifically, recent experiments in labor internationalism, this paper examines the geography of the Liverpool dock dispute, 1995–98. The dispute has rarely been subject to a serious analysis of its causes and trajectory. This is surprising since it was not only the most protracted industrial dispute in recent British history but also the hub of a relatively novel form of transnational labor organizing: namely, a form of grass-roots internationalism organized largely outside the formal apparatuses of national and international unionism. In the paper I focus on the nature and dynamics of this “grass-roots internationalis” with a view to making two claims that have a wider thematic and theoretical relevance to the study of labor geographies. First, contrary to an emerging new orthodoxy in labor geography (and labor studies more generally), the Liverpool case in fact suggests that the necessity for labor to “up-scale” solidarity and struggle in the 1990s is much overstated. Second, the Liverpool case suggests that international labor organizing is only efficacious when considered in relation to two scales of struggle often thought increasingly irrelevant or ineffectual in a globalizing world: the local and the national. Thus, while those few analysts who have cited the Liverpool dispute, basing their assessments on secondhand knowledge, have held the dockers up as exemplars of a new form of labor internationalism, in this paper I suggest the need for a more complex and contingent appreciation of the multiscalar dynamics of labor struggles. In short, we have not yet reached the stage, even in a globalizing world, where labor’s “spatial fixes”mustbe preeminently supranational.
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Labour geography: A work in progress [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00761.x URL [本文引用: 2] 摘要
This short essay takes stock of where the field of 'labour geography' has got to and where it might productively go. The first part identifies labour geography's signature characteristics as they have emerged over the last 15-20 years. These are its insistence that geography is constitutive of employment issues, its emphasis on worker agency, its analytical promiscuousness, its acute awareness of power and inequality, and its Left sensibility politically speaking. The second part of the essay is programmatic and looks to the future. It is argued that labour geographers ought to more carefully conceptualize and study worker agency; to connect labour migration more organically with existing research on place-based workers; to develop a more substantive understanding of how states regulate employment and workers' lives; to look to synthesize different geographical dimensions of worker existence and strategy; to aim to examine working peoples' lives holistically; and to be more explicit about the normative basis of their 'pro-labour' stance and its implications for worker strategy.
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Spaces of work: Global capitalism and geographies of labour [M]. |
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Geographies of production III: Making space for labour [J].https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512441318 URL [本文引用: 4] |
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Labour and global production networks: Mapping variegated landscapes of agency [M] |
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Global production networks: Realizing the potential [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbn002 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Downloadable (with restrictions)! Author(s): Neil M. Coe & Peter Dicken & Martin Hess. 2008 Abstract: No abstract is available for this item.
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Global production networks, labour and development [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.08.003 URL 摘要
This theme issue introduction profiles the small but growing body of research that explores the connections between global production networks, labour and development. It does so in three stages. First, it outlines key ongoing global trends relating to the functional and spatial fragmentation of production and consumption processes. Second, it considers the potential for worker agency within shifting global production network structures, asserting that such agency is shaped both by relations within production networks and territorial institutional systems. Third, the implications for understandings of development are considered, and the need to move beyond the production networks themselves to incorporate other actors and dimensions of place is identified. The introduction also outlines and positions the eight papers that follow against these broader debates. 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
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Constrained agency: Re-evaluating the geographies of labour [J].https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510366746 URL [本文引用: 4] 摘要
This article critically evaluates the concept of labour agency. First, we briefly reprise structure/agency debates in human geography in order to distil how agency is best conceived. Second, we propose a more discerning approach to labour agency that unpacks its many spatial and temporal dimensions. Third, we develop a 0900re-embedded0964 notion of labour agency and identify global production networks, the state, the community and labour market intermediaries as key arenas for consideration. The paper argues that worker strategies must always be assessed in relation to these wider social relations, suggesting a constrained, variegated notion of labour agency.
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Intervening in globalization: The spatial possibilities and institutional barriers to labour's collective agency [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbu039 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Trade unions are facing a series of challenges around place-based forms of work in industries such as construction, transport and public services. New spatial strategies by employers involving corporate reorganization, increased outsourcing and the use of migrant labour, allied to a deepening of neoliberal governance processes are accelerating a race to the bottom in wages and conditions. Drawing upon the experience of two recent labour disputes in the UK—at Heathrow Airport and Lindsey Oil Refinery—we explore the potential for workers to intervene in such globalizing processes. We highlight both the ability of grassroots workers to mobilize their own spatial networks but also their limitations in an increasingly hostile neoliberal landscape.
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Class, agency and resistance in the old industrial city [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00731.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Abstract: Recent left academic work on the consequences of economic restructuring and local labour market change in old industrial cities has been important in emphasising the role of local context and contingency in the shaping of labour market outcomes. However, in such accounts agency is often limited to capital and state actors, albeit working across scales from the local upwards. There is little sense of agency for individuals and communities in the midst of economic restructuring. Instead, they are usually treated as passive victims of deeper underlying processes. In this paper, our purpose is to highlight the autonomy and agency of workers, people and communities in old industrial cities. Rather than starting from the perspective of capital, our starting point is to emphasise how those experiencing economic change forge strategies and practices for "getting by". This leads us to call for a re-theorisation of labour agency, drawing upon the Autonomous Marxist tradition and the more recent work of Cindi Katz, in order to offer fresh insight into the agency of labour and the prospect for recovering a class politics based upon lived experience over reified abstractions.
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Global shift: Reshaping the global economic map in the 21st century [M]. |
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Insurgency and institutionalization: The Polanyian countermovement and Chinese labor politics [J].https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9192-1 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Why is it that in the nearly 1002years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi’s theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined “moments”: the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus far been confounded by conditions of “appropriated representation,” where the only worker organizations allowed to exist are those within the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions. However, in drawing on two case studies of strikes in capital-intensive industries in Guangdong province, I show that the relationship between insurgency and institutionalization shifted between 2007 and 2010.
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Of steel and strawberries: Greek workers struggle against informal and flexible working arrangements during the crisis [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.08.014 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper studies workers’ resistance to the spread of informal and flexible employment patterns in Greece during the ongoing economic crisis. It focuses upon the spatial aspects of two strikes, the first by immigrant agricultural workers employed in the strawberry fields of Nea Manolada, in the Peloponnesus region, and the second by steelworkers employed at the Hellenic Steelworks SA in Aspropyrgos, in the Attica region. The paper analyses workers’ agency in both these cases, viewing it as a relational phenomenon strongly determined by the economic specificities of the sector to which workers’ employers belonged, by the workers’ ability (or not) to develop trans-local networks of solidarity and by the timing of the two struggles. We view the paper as a contribution to the growing body of Labour Geography research in two ways: (i) it speaks to how to theorise worker agency in a more nuanced manner; and (ii) it argues that, rather than viewing workers as simply social actors who are caught up in labour markets that are assumed to be structured by the actions of capital and the state (as per much economic theory), workers can actually play important roles in shaping how labour markets function and in resisting the tendency for precarious employment relations to spread across them.
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Paradoxes of the border: Labor shortages and farmworker minor agency in reworking California's strawberry fields [J].https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2016.1180241 URL 摘要
Abstract I examine how strawberry growers’ experiences of a farm labor shortage have led them to attend to plant vigor and the conditions of strawberry harvesting as a labor recruitment strategy. Both allow harvest workers, who work primarily on piece rates, to earn more money per input of time. These were unexpected findings in a larger study in which I examine how California’s strawberry industry is responding to tighter regulatory restrictions for soil fumigants. Drawn from semi-structured interviews with strawberry growers and industry representatives, these data paint a picture of worker capriciousness in an industry in which loyalty has been a major form of labor control. In making the empirical case, I engage with the work of Wells, who wrote extensively about how industry structure and the natural characteristics of the strawberry had coalesced to discipline workers. Noting that her arguments revolved on conditions of labor surplus, I discuss recent changes in labor market conditions, brought about in part by the changed US border and immigration policy, that have given workers a modicum of leverage. Nevertheless, working conditions remain grueling and pay rates not substantially changed, suggesting that growers would prefer to tinker with the technological conditions of production than significantly alter prevailing wages. In noting workers’ apparent effect on the material conditions in which they work, this article contributes to discussions in labor geography on worker agency in shaping economic landscapes at the same time it speaks to the broader constraints farmworkers face in agricultural labor markets.
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The limits to capital [M]. |
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Moral matters: De-romanticising worker agency and charting future directions for labour geography [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12272 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
The rise of labour geography over the last 2065years has ensured that labour politics, worker rights and employment-related struggles have remained strong themes in economic geography. This article provides an updated review of labour geography's development, charting its expansion from an early focus on organised spatial ‘resistance’ at a range of scales, to a more varied project incorporating a wider range of analytical and empirical inquiries. Despite this progression the paper suggests that work is still needed to address a gap in moral considerations within labour geography as a whole. Specifically a moral economy approach is offered as a means of explaining the decision-making processes/rationales behind worker actions in the context of particular struggles. This includes a necessary focus on less celebratory, ethical or successful forms of coping with labour market challenges on the part of workers than have typically been discussed in the case studies of labour geography.
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Resilience and reworking practices: Becoming the first-generation of industrial workers in Can Tho, Vietnam [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.10.013 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
For more than a decade, labor geography has stressed the importance of ‘giving primacy’ to workers in the analysis of global economic restructuring. However, the majority of contributions have focused on organized workers, leaving the issue of individual labor agency much in the dark. The aim of this article is to shed light on the agency of individual workers involved in rapid industrialization processes. In this endeavor we draw inspiration from recent contributions that have integrated Cindi Katz’s threefold categorization of agency as reworking, resilience and resistance. In combination with this categorization, we apply a distinction between workers’ intentions to enter the industrial labor market and the consequences of doing so (i.e. the outcomes of their engagement). The discrepancy between intentions and outcomes is indicative of labor agency and points to the structural constraints that condition the labor market. The empirical part of the article draws on interviews with local and migrant first-generation workers in two settlements located next to an industrial zone in Can Tho Province in the Mekong River Delta Region of Vietnam. It is suggested that the alternating practices of reworking and resilience can be conceptualized as transformative trajectories - workers’ situated knowledge and practices evolve and change over time and is conditioned by the specific labor market contexts through which the individual moves.
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From a geography of labor to a labor geography: Labor's spatial fix and the geography of capitalism [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00033 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Mainstream neoclassical economic geography and its Marxist critique have largely failed to incorporate active conceptions of working class people in their explanations of the location of economic activities. Neoclassical approaches tend to conceive of workers simply as factors of location, whereas Marxist approaches primarily focus on how capital structures the economic landscape in its search for profit and frequently relegate labor to the status of “variable capital.” Both approaches present Geographies of Labor. They have not really examined how workers try to make industrial landscapes. In contrast, I argue that workers have an interest in how the economic geography of capitalism is made; consequently, they seek to impose what we might call “labor's spatial fix” and so play an active role in the unevenly developed geography of capitalism. Examining how workers try to develop their own spatial fixes allows us to incorporate a more active sense of workers as geographical agents into understandings of the production of space under capitalism. Recognizing that workers' efforts to create “labor's spatial fix” are significant allows us to theorize how workers attempt to make space as an integral part of their social existence (a ) and so to write less capital-oriented economic geographies.
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Labor's spatial praxis and the geography of contract bargaining in the US east coast longshore industry, 1953-1989 [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(96)00048-0 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
ABSTRACT This paper examines the production of new geographical scales of contract bargaining in the United States east coast longshore industry during the post-Second World War period. In particular, it analyses how the International Longshoremen's Association, which represents east coast waterfront workers, forged a national contract in response to political challenges by a rival union and economic challenges brought about by the introduction of new labor-saving technologies such as containerization. As a means to equalize working conditions in ports from Maine to Texas the union used strikes, work slowdowns, legal action, political pressure and cargo-handling boycotts to force reluctant employers in 1957 to agree to a master contract covering the North Atlantic ports. Upon completion of negotiations in the North Atlantic, the terms of this master contract were also usually adopted by ports in the South Atlantic and Gulf regions. The implementation of a master contract represented a significant change from the system of port-by-port bargaining which had traditionally dominated labor relations in the industry. In response, employers subsequently felt compelled to restructure their own organization so that by the 1970s a number of regional employer groups had formed throughout the industry to negotiate for several ports at once. Following its success in securing a regional master contract, in 1977 the union negotiated a national agreement covering a number of items related to job security. However, during the 1980s the increasing costs of the union's contracts encouraged many West Gulf employers to turn to cheaper non-union labor to the point where, in 1986, 11 locals in this region broke with the national union and offered concessions as a means to preserve work for their members. This schism poses a significant threat to the union's efforts to continue ensuring that all dockers enjoy the same basic contractual rights. The paper shows how struggles over the scale at which bargaining takes place have been fundamental to the development of the industry's economic geography. Furthermore, the fact that groups of dockers adopted an explicitly geographical response to the threat of job loss raises questions about how workers' activities are theorized in explanations of the production of the economic geography of capitalism.
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Labor unions and economic geography [M] |
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Implications of just-in-time production for union strategy: Lessons from the 1998 general motors-united auto workers dispute [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/0004-5608.00207 URL 摘要
This paper analyzes the spatial and temporal dynamics of the 1998 General Motors-United Auto Workers dispute to examine what implications ‘lean’ production methods may have for organized labor. Whereas much writing on new forms of production organization has tended to see such developments in ‘either/ or’ terms — either as an attack on unions in the workplace, or as offering workers an opportunity for empowerment through teamwork and greater control over job content — in this paper, I argue that, under lean production, the power relations between workers and employers are being refashioned in contradictory ways at different geographic scales. Specifically, while lean production may indeed represent an attack on workers’ traditional ways of doing things at the scale of the shopfloor, the introduction of Just-in-Time production methods as part of the ‘leaning’ of capitalism may present new possibilities at the scale of interplant relations for unions to exploit in their relationship with employers. In this paper, then, I seek to identify key moments in the GM-UAW dispute through an examination of its spatial and temporal dynamics. Identifying such key moments provides insights into the changing landscape of union-employer relations. Based on these findings, I suggest that new forms of production organization may require unions to transform their modes of spatial organization and the geographical strategies that they have traditionally used.
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Workers, space, and labor geography [J].https://doi.org/10.1017/S014754790300022X URL [本文引用: 2] 摘要
In this paper I argue that adopting an explicitly spatial theoretical framework can add significantly to our understanding of working-class life. Specifically, I argue that workers are spatial as well as historical social agents and that they seek to shape the economic landscape in ways which facilitate their political and economic goals, though they clearly do not have free range to do so orkers make their own geographies, though not under the conditions of their own choosing. The paper explores how capitalism functions as a spatial system, what this means for workers' spatial praxis, and how workers can try to shape capitalism's geography to their own ends. The paper is in three main sections. The first section lays out the conceptual basis for understanding capitalism as a spatial system. In the second section I examine a number of ways in which a sensitivity to matters spatial can help us understand workers' social praxis. The third section explores some issues related to how the changing geography of capitalism is providing new challenges to workers and organized labor.
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Working space: Why incorporating the geographical is central to theorizing work and employment practices [J].https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017007076633 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Theorists of work and employment (W&E) practices should more seriously engage with literatures concerning how space is constitutive of social praxis. Rather than simply serving as a stage upon which social life is played out or being merely a reflection of social relations, the construction of the economic landscape in particular ways is fundamental to how social systems function. Struggles over space are a central dynamic in W&E practices as different actors engage with the economic landscape to ensure their 'geographical vision' is emplaced in that landscape. Furthermore, conflicts over W&E practices frequently revolve around the spatial (re)scaling of such practices (as when collective bargaining is 'decentralized'). Consequently, an important key to better theorizing W&E practices is understanding how the various spatial scales at which these operate are socially constructed and discursively represented.
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From revanchism to ambivalence: The changing politics of street vending in Guangzhou [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12031 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
By focusing on Guangzhou's street-vending policy transformation, this article explores how exclusionary practices of urban politics in China are undermined by those who it seeks to exclude and the progressive political climate that questions the exclusionary framework. The exclusion of street vendors in Guangzhou has been led by the National Sanitary City campaign as a revanchist project. It has been discovered that while the exclusionary strategies are rendered difficult to operate due to the resistance of street vendors who develop a flexible, individualized and small-scale activism to maintain their livelihoods, the discourse of social harmony at national level has driven local authorities to seek alternatives expected to alleviate social resistance and address people's livelihoods. However, rather than an overturn of the punitive framework, an ambivalent approach, recognized in a recent critique of revanchism, has been adopted to mediate the tension between the needs to retain attractive city images and address the livelihoods of the poor in Chinese cities.
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Labour geographies of India's new service economy [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbs008 URL [本文引用: 1] |
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Spaces of labor activism, Mexican-American women and the farm worker movement in South Texas since 1966 [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00521.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper studies the farm worker unionization experience and the historical development of Mexican‐American women's activism in South Texas to elaborate more precisely the relationship among socio‐spatial practices, political activism and labor's geography. Drawing upon archival documents and interviews, the paper describes how Mexican‐American farm workers used public space for political activity; however, radical unionization efforts also domesticized other spaces for women's activities. The paper chronicles how Mexican‐American women in South Texas transformed the farm worker center from a "domesticated space" into one of empowerment. In short, women in the union made the farm worker center into a space that challenged both the class‐based structure of larger South Texas society and masculinist practices within the larger farm worker movement. The analysis advances the imperative to better understand how workers "make space" to ensure their own survival. The paper advances the study of labor geography by arguing that working class mobilization reconstitutes dynamic social geographies within laboring communities themselves. In arguing this point, the paper illustrates the limitations of activism based solely on the use of public space and argues for more attention to the significance of other socio‐political spaces for labor mobilization.
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Local labour control regimes: Uneven development and the social regulation of production [J].https://doi.org/10.1080/00343409612331349688 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
JONAS A. E. G. (1996) Local labour control regimes: uneven development and the social regulation of production, Reg. Studies 30, 323-338. The apparent demise of Fordist consensus-seeking institutions of labour regulation raises questions concerning which, if any, forms of labour market governance will dominate localities in the future. Without providing the answers for these questions, this paper addresses at a theoretical level the social need for capital to foster reciprocities between places of production and sites of consumption and labour reproduction in local labour markets. This need emerges from a contradiction between, on the one hand, capital's abstract interest in the global exchange of labour power and, on the other hand, the concrete interest of particular capitals in the local context of that exchange. A local labour control regime amounts to a stable local institutional framework for accumulation and labour regulation constructed around local labour market reciprocities. Different factions of capital are more or less dependent on local labour control regimes. The decision to restructure through space is contingent on the level of that dependence and assessment of the incorporation and adaptation costs of entering a new labour market environment. Locally dependent factions may choose to become more locally involved when local institutions of labour market governance are threatened. The paper discusses different community ideologies arising from the local involvement of capital factions and concludes by placing uneven development centre-stage in a theory of local labour regulation and control. JONAS A. E. G. (1996) Systemes de controle du travail locaux: developpement irregulier et regulation sociale de la production, Reg. Studies 30, 323-338. La disparition apparente des systemes de controle du travail du type Fordiste qui cherchent le consensus, met en doubte l'existence des systemes de controle du marche du travail susceptibles de dominer les regions a l'avenir. Sans fournir des reponses a ces questions-la, cet article aborde au niveau theorique le besoin social du capital pour promouvoir de la reciprocite entre les zones de production et de consommation et la reproduction du travail dans les bassins d'emploi locaux. Ce besoin releve d'une contradiction entre d'un cote l'interet abstrait du capital pour l'echange mondial du pouvoir de la main-d'oeuvre et de l'autre cote l'interet concret des capitaux particuliers pour le contexte local de cet echange-la. Un systeme de controle du travail d'envergure locale constitue un cadre institutionnel local stable quant a l'accumulation et la regulation du travail, construit autour des reciprocites des marches du travail locaux. Diverses factions du capital dependent plus ou moins des systemes de controle du travail locaux. La decision de reconstruire dans l'espace depend du niveau de cette dependance et de l'evaluation des couts d'incorporation et d'adaptation de l'entree dans un nouvel environnement du travail. Il se peut que les factions dont la dependance s'exprime sur le plan local, choisissent de s'engager au niveau local au moment ou les systemes de controle du travail locaux sont menaces. L'article discute des ideologies communautaires differentes qui proviennent de la participation locale des factions du capital, et conclut par considerer le developpement irregulier comme le point de mire d'une theorie de la regulation et du controle du travail. JONAS A. E. G. (1996) Lokale Arbeitskontrollsysteme: Ungleiche Entwicklung und die gesellschaftliche Regulierung der Produktion, Reg. Studies 30, 323-338. Die offensichtliche Verabschiedung Fordischer, Ubereinstimmung anstrebender Institutionen fur Arbeitsbestimmungen la'sst die Frage aufkommen, welche, wenn uberhaupt irgendwelche, Formen der Arbeitsmarktregulierung in Zukunft an Orten bestimmend sein werden. Ohne Antworten auf diese Fragen zu liefern, geht dieser Aufsatz auf theoretischer Ebene das gesellschaftliche Bedurfnis nach Kapital zur Forderung der Handelsreziprozitat zwischen Herstellerorten und Verbraucherstatten, und Fortpflanzung von Arbeitskraften in ortlichen Arbeitsmarkten an. Dieses Bedurfnis ergibt sich aus dem Widerspruch zwischen dem abstrakten Interesse des Kapitals an der globalen Vermittlung von Arbeitskraften einerseits und dem konkreten Interesse spezifischen Kapitals dieser Vermittlung im lokalen Rahmen andrerseits. Eine Lokalmethode der Anwendung von Arbeitsbestimmungen kommt einer stabilen, institutionellen Grundlage des Ortes fur Zuwachs und Arbeitsvorschriften gleich, die auf der Basis ortlicher Arbeitsmarktreziprozitaten entwickelt wurde. Verschiedene Interessengruppen des Kapitals hangen mehr oder weniger von ortlichen Methoden der Arbeitsregulierung ab. Die Entscheidung, uber Raume hinweg umzustrukturieren, hangt von dem Ausmass der Abhangigkeit ab, sowie von der Beurteilung der Eingliederung und den Anpassungskosten des Einstiegs in eine neue Arbeitsmarktumwelt. Ortsabhangige Interessengruppen mogen fur starkere Beteiligung am Orte sein, wenn ortliche Institutionen der Arbeitsmarktregulierung bedroht sind. Der Aufiatz diskutiert unterschiedliche Gemeinschaftsideologien, die sich aus der Beteiligung von Kapitalinteressengruppen am Orte ergeben, und schliesst damit, dass ungleiche Entwicklung in den Mittelpunkt der Buhne der Theorie der oialichen Arbeitsregulierungen und-bestimmungen gestellt wird.
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The geographies of community-oriented unionism: Scales, targets, sites and domains of union renewal in South Africa and beyond [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00504.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Abstract This article takes the increased interest in union renewal and community politics within the geography discipline as its starting point, and argues that the various cases described in the literature should be understood as socio-spatial responses to a new geography of work. Encouraged by the literature on contentious politics, I provide a conceptualisation of how workers reconfigure political spaces through community orientation. A concrete case of municipal unionism in Cape Town, South Africa is used to explore these geographies along four dimensions: the scalar strategies of trade unions, their targets for direct action, their sites of recruitment and the domain of mobilisation these campaigns and alliances stake out for themselves. It is argued that community-oriented unionism tends to entail a reorientation of each of these dimensions. Moreover, union strategies correspond to particular challenges faced in times when local labour markets undergo neoliberal restructuring, such as fragmentation of work and rescaling of labour relations.
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Agency by exit: Swedish nurses and the "not below 24,000" movement [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.02.012 URL 摘要
Hirschman’s (1970) concepts of exit, voice and loyalty can be reworked to add further nuances to the understanding of labour agency.Agency by exitis of interest in demonstrating how agency is conditioned by structures and context that constrain and enable successful action. It may start as individual acts of coping and then enable and empower more collective actions of reworking and resistance. Agency by exit thereby expands our understanding of what strategies of coping, reworking and resistance entail. We base our arguments on a case study of the “Not below 24,000” movement among nurse students and newly graduated nurses for acceptable entry wages in Sweden. The movement has succeeded in raising the entry wage for a number of newly graduated nurses by turning individual and collective agency by exit into structural power. While the movement has managed to shake power relations, it has not fully changed the rules of the game.
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| [46] |
Places of work, scales of organising: A review of labour geography [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00047.x URL [本文引用: 2] 摘要
Labour geography has emerged as a vibrant, young stream of research within the critical geography tradition. It encompasses a variety of academic contributions which apply a spatial political economy approach to the world of work, ranging from analyses of the structural factors of local labour markets to studies of union strategies. The task of the article 'Places of work . . .' has been to offer an updated review of the existing literature, and to see the theoretical insights of these contributions in relation to each other. Fuelled by the emergence of new organising strategies among trade unions in neoliberal economies, there has been a revived interest in unionism amongst geographers. Labour geographers operate in the intersection of political and economic geography, and should appear on the reading list of any student who seeks to understand the contested nature of neoliberal globalisation. This Teaching and Learning Guide will focus on certain topics identified as key areas where labour geography can offer relevant insights. Hopefully, the guide can function as a supplement to other syllabi on geographies of labour and work by placing an emphasis on labour agency i.e. the political opportunities of workers. Author Recommends 1. Peck, J. (1996). Workplace: the social regulation of labor markets . New York, NY: Guilford Press. The Peck book is a good place to start reading up on the theoretical foundations of labour geography. It provides a sophisticated Marxian analysis of the labour market, and links this understanding to the politics of reproduction and to collective action. 2. Herod, A. (ed.) (1998). Organizing the landscape: geographical perspectives on labor unionism . Minnesota, MN: University Press. 3. Herod, A. (2001). Labor geographies: workers and the landscapes of capitalism . New York, NY: Guilford Press. The two Herod books are seminal contributions to the discipline, and both are still worth reading. The 1998 anthology is noteworthy for the number of influential case studies presented (particularly the chapters by Savage and Mitchell), whereas Chapter 2 in Labor Geographies brings the theoretical sophistication of labour agency a long step forward. 4. Castree, N., N. Coe, K. Ward and M. Samers (2004). Spaces of work: Global capitalism and geographies of labour . London, UK: Sage Publications. The only proper text book in the field has taken labour geography beyond single case studies and essay reflections, and serves as a brilliant introduction to the key concepts. It can also function as an alternative syllabus to the one presented here. 5. Castree, N. (2000). 'Geographical scale and grassroots internationalism: the Liverpool dock dispute, 1995鈥1998.' Economic Geography 76(3): 272 292. <P>The discussion of internationalism presented in this article has the advantage of having been preceded by other case studies on the possibilities of internat
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Maximum working class unity: Challenges to local social movement unionism in Cape Town [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2006.00477.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Abstract Joint political mobilisation between trade unions and community groups, often referred to as ‘social movement unionism’, has been upheld as a way forward for organised labour in a neoliberal world economy. Analysing the interaction between unions and communities is critical for understanding the potential and actual roles played by trade unions in voicing the concerns of marginalized workers and poor communities. This article examines the efforts of organised municipal workers and urban social movements trying to unite their forces in post-apartheid South Africa, by looking at the politics of the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF). While the participants of the APF have in common their opposition to commercialisation and privatisation of service delivery, their political unity is fragile. By contrasting the ‘ideal-type’ social movement unionism depicted in the contemporary literature on labour and globalisation with the findings of this particular case, we uncover some main dimensions along which this organisational cooperation is challenged. In contrast to the political unity experienced during the anti-apartheid struggle, the APF initiative operates in a restructuring post-apartheid economy where bridging internal organisational differences and confronting the hegemonic position of the African National Congress (ANC) in civil society have proved particularly challenging.
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Labor agency in the football manufacturing industry of Sialkot, Pakistan [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.04.007 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
The globalization of markets and the increased outsourcing of production have given rise to global production networks (GPNs) linking internationally branded companies in the West to vast networks of suppliers, contractors and workers in developing countries and countries in transition. However, the literature on GPNs has only recently begun to pay more detailed attention to conceptualizing the role that labor plays in such networks. This article makes a contribution to the emerging literature on labor agency in GPNs by arguing that labor agency in export-oriented industries in developing countries may be highly gendered and tends to be more constrained than facilitated by both vertical forces (the governance of GPNs) and horizontal forces (local socio-economic and labor market contexts). This is done through a case study of labor agency in the football manufacturing industry of Sialkot, Pakistan.
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| [49] |
Corporate social responsibility and labour agency: The case of Nike in Pakistan [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbt041 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This article examines the circumstances under which corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives facilitate and/or constrain labour agency in global production networks (GPNs). Using a case study of Nike’s CSR approach in the football manufacturing industry of Pakistan, we explore the extent to which the measures advocated in a new, emerging policy paradigm on CSR in GPNs enabled labour agency at Nike’s main football supplier factory in Pakistan. We argue that while such CSR policies can create enhanced space for labour agency, that potential agency is also shaped (i) by wider economic forces within the global economy and (ii) relationships with local/national actors and regulatory frameworks. Understanding the intersection of these dimensions becomes vital to interpreting the potential for, and activation of, labour agency within CSR-influenced GPNs.
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Spatial divisions of labour: Social structures and the geography of production [M]. |
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"We will go side-by-side with you" Labour union engagement with Aboriginal peoples in Canada [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.005 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
The inclusion of new groups of workers has been an important component of union renewal efforts. Several unions in Canada have begun to dedicate significant resources to better organize and represent Aboriginal workers. Drawing on interviews with union activists, organizers and representatives from two national public sector unions in Canada, we present an overview of union strategies to engage with Aboriginal peoples. Results suggest that understanding the distinct territorial context of Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions has been necessary to the success of these union strategies. This approach begins by drawing connections between Aboriginal peoples’ present-day relationships to work and their prior occupancy of, and dispossession from, lands and resources. Because of the geographical specificity of how the colonial experience affected Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions, unions have had to adopt non-normative approaches to their engagements with Aboriginal peoples. In workplaces where settlers were dominant, addressing racism in the workplace and gaining support for initiatives to hire and train Aboriginal workers were important. Alternatively, in Aboriginal workplaces, organizing was a priority. Here questions of union legitimacy have taken precedence and the focus of unions has been on partnership building. Most importantly, however, engagement with Aboriginal peoples has brought attention to the colonial practices within unions and helped to foster growing Aboriginal voice within the labour movement.
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Common ground at ground zero: The new economy and the new organizing in Los Angeles [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00183 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
In the Amery Oasis of the northern Prince Charles Mountains, the glaciomarine Bardin Bluffs Formation of the Pagodroma Group was deposited between the Late Pliocene (< 3.1 Ma) and Early Pleistocene (>1 Ma). The formation provides evidence of (i) a reduced East Antarctic ice sheet compared to that of the present day and (ii) a subsequent Plio-Pleistocene ice sheet expansion. The formation consists of two members. The older, basal Member 1 is c. 12.5 m thick and consists of relatively ice-distal silty, sandy and sparsely fossiliferous fjordal strata. Member 1 reflects largely ice-free marine sedimentation c. 250 km inland from the current Amery Ice Shelf edge. The member is restricted to the area about the north-eastern end of Pagodroma Gorge where it infills a chemically weathered erosion surface, cut in the form of a valley on the Permo-Triassic Amery Group. Weathering occurred during aerial exposure of the Amery Oasis in a warmer climate than that of today. The younger Member 2 exceeds 40 m in thickness and is made up of coarse ice proximal glaciomarine diamicts. It overlies disconformably Member 1 at Pagodroma Gorge. Elsewhere, Member 2 rests directly upon a smoothed and striated erosion surface, cut on the Amery Group, which was part of a fjord floor. This erosional surface and the facies contrast between the two members, indicates an East Antarctic Ice Sheet expansion and Lambert Glacier grounding-line advance.
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Making space for labour [M]
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Social upgrading in developing country industrial clusters: A reflection on the literature [J].https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529415611265 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
In this article, we examine the role of social upgrading in developing country industrial clusters. We argue that while economic growth and productivity enhancement matter, social conditions within clusters are influenced by state monetary, fiscal, and labour policies and regulations, as well as by dynamic processes of agency among cluster governance actors. We find that the state's policies and regulations might enable or constrain cluster actors to behave in ways that affect social upgrading or downgrading. These policies and regulations may also be used by the state to directly change social conditions in national contexts, including in cluster settings, in order to further the government's overall economic strategy. The conclusion outlines our main findings, and the research and policy implications of our analysis.
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Review and positions: Global production networks and labour [J].https://doi.org/10.1179/102452911X13025292603714 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
ABSTRACT Commodity chains that are global in extent have increasingly come to be seen as the defining element of the contemporary globalized world economy. Since the 1990s a body of theory — evolving from global commodity chain analysis to global value chain analysis to global production network analysis — has focused upon understanding how such commodity chains function. However, despite providing many important insights, these bodies of literature have generally suffered from a major deficiency in that they have failed to consider labour as an active agent capable of shaping such chains' structure and geographical organization. Here, then, we present a case for locating more centrally labour, in production network analysis.
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Prospects for labour in global value chains: Labour standards in the cut flower and banana industries [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00744.x URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Global value chain (GVC) governance is central to analyses of labour's strategic options. It frames the terrain on which labour campaigns and institutions — such as private social standards and international framework agreements — contribute to the social regulation of value chains. GVC concepts help to emphasize how power in the employment relationship transcends organizational boundaries, as well as how industrial power is shifting from the sphere of production to that of consumption. Based on extensive case studies of the banana and cut flower value chains, we explore the implications of GVC restructuring for the scope and form of labour rights strategies.
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Spaces of work and everyday life: Labour geographies and the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00290.x URL 摘要
In this study, I focus on the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers people who travel away to work for just a few weeks or months. Such workers have been relatively neglected in labour geography. Perhaps surprisingly, given the focus on the agency of capital in much of his writing, I build on two arguments made by David Harvey. First, workers' spatial mobility is complex and may involve short as well as longer term migrations, and secondly that this can have significance both materially and in relation to the subjective experience of employment. The spatial embeddedness of temporary migrant workers' everyday lives can be a resource for shaping landscapes (and ordinary histories) of capitalism, even though any changes may be short-lived and take place at the micro-scale. The article is illustrated with case study material from research with workers in the agriculture sector in India and the UK, and concludes with more general implications for labour geographers engaged with other sectors and places.
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| [60] |
Does economic upgrading lead to social upgrading in global production networks: Evidence from Morocco [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.02.002 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper contributes to the global production networks (GPNs) literature by analyzing the relationship between economic upgrading (increase in the value added of production) and social upgrading (improvements for workers in GPNs). It does so by drawing on primary data from Moroccan garment supplier firms, showing that economic upgrading can lead to social upgrading with mixed outcomes. Especially in a fast fashion model, the most advanced form of economic upgrading, functional upgrading, often translates into social upgrading and downgrading simultaneously for different workers. This is due to contradictory commercial requirements imposed by global buyers in GPNs.
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| [61] |
Garments without guilt: Uneven labour geographies and ethical trading: Sri Lankan labour perspectives [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbu059 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Economic geographers tout social upgrading via economic upgrading as a path that engenders labour conditions, while labour geographers underscore the inherent contradictions of corporate governance initiatives. They point to the conceptual flaws of firm-level analysis, given the limited attentiveness to worker actions and labour voice. Others point to the inherent tensions in global governance initiatives as they traverse along global supply chains, and the absence of labour voice within corporate codes. This neglect underpins my article, which uses Sri Lanka as a litmus case to critically engage with labour voice around ethical codes and analyse its efficacy as a form of social upgrading.
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| [62] |
Trade unions, coalitions and communities: Australia's construction, forestry, mining and energy union and the international stakeholder campaign against Rio Tinto [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2003.03.001 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
There is a growing geographical literature on the significance of organised labour. A key theoretical and political question concerns the extent and nature of the engagement between trade unions and other groups in the broader community. The paper seeks to contribute to this debate by focusing specifically on the ways in which trade unions engage collaboratively with such interest groups over international corporate campaign issues. It draws upon a case study of the encounter between Australia Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and Rio Tinto, one of the largest privately owned mining companies in the world. This was conducted through a loose alliance co-ordinated by the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers Unions (ICEM). The campaign included the use of stakeholder reports aimed at influencing corporate shareholders. The main issues concerned the rights of indigenous peoples, environmental consequences of mining operations, and human rights in the workplace. The attempt to change these aspects of corporate culture led to union-inspired resolutions at the firm May 2000 Annual General Meeting, the first attempt to challenge a company through international union-led action in this manner. Although defeated, the resolutions were backed by a significant minority of leading institutional shareholders. The paper interprets this campaign in terms of broader debates over the spatiality of organised labour and the role of trade unions, at a time when increased significance has been attached to alternative political movements. It seeks to theorise the specific implications of internationally-grounded interest-based campaigns and take into account the ways in which these are both constrained by, and draw strength from, their constitution at this spatial scale.
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Beyond firm-centrism: Re-integrating labour and capitalism into global commodity chain analysis [J].https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbr016 URL PMID: 22843561 [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Since the mid-1990s, global commodity chain (GCC) analysis has contributed much to our understanding of processes of globalization and development. It has however, broadly failed to integrate class relations generally and labour in particular into its approach. This article suggests that we can understand this failure by revisiting and critically interrogating GCC's intellectual foundationsin World Systems Theory and Schumpeterian conceptions of capitalist innovation. It also argues that if carefully reformed, these foundations can provide a useful framework from which to conduct research into processes of contemporary development. A central argument of this paper is that evolving capitallabour relations co-determine processes of capitalist expansion and development, and that a commitment to understanding and investigating these relations should be placed more firmly at the centre of GCC analysis.
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| [65] |
Social upgrading and labour in global production networks: A critique and an alternative conception [J].https://doi.org/10.1179/1024529412Z.00000000026 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Over the last two decades the global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) frameworks have facilitated valuable research into contemporary global capitalism. However, much of this research has paid insufficient attention to work and workers. Recently, the concept of social upgrading, with a strong emphasis on workers’ conditions, has been advanced by leading GCC/GVC/GPN theorists, as a potential remedy to the previous lacunae. This article welcomes this development, but also argues that the social upgrading concept represents an elite comprehension of relations between capital, the state and labour. It is argued that the concept, derived from the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda, denies the reality of labour’s exploitation by capital and is therefore only partially equipped to explain the existence of indecent work. The Decent Work Agenda and the social upgrading concept expect improvements in work to be delivered by elite actors such as firms, national states and international organizations. It is argued that, through re-visiting Marx’s explication of the capitalist labour process, it is possible to comprehend the nature of capitalist exploitation, the root causes of indecent work and resistance to it, and thus to develop an alternative conception of social upgrading. The article presents evidence from North East Brazilian export horticulture to support these argument
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Another place is possible: Labor geography, spatial dispossession, and gendered resistance in central Appalachia [J].https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.924731 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
The demise of Fordism and inauguration of neoliberal policy regimes may be conceptualized as historical processes of spatial dispossession that diminish and sometimes destroy the collective spaces of working-class life. In central Appalachia, where miners’ militant, unionized brotherhood once influenced the geography of the bituminous coal industry and enabled the growth of active, working-class communities, spatial dispossession is especially stark. Here, neoliberalization of space involves not only the familiar dismantling of public institutions but also corporate enclosures of lands once treated as commons, withdrawal of residents from polluted local ecologies, intentional destruction of union solidarity, and erosion of miners’ heroic masculinity. Historical analysis reveals this dismantling of labor's gendered geography and degradation of working-class environments as mutually interrelated processes. Spatial dispossession is also evoking opposition, however, from reactionary, industry-orchestrated mobilizations to valorize coal in the name of masculinist nationalism, to fragmentary efforts, often led by women, seeking alternative economic and political possibilities. These conflict-ridden dynamics of spatial influence, dispossession, and (re)creation lay bare interrelated coproductions of gender and class, political economy and cultural practice, “nature” and society and thereby point toward a labor geography capable of engaging the contradictory forces that animate working-class life.
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| [67] |
Agency within a socially regulated labour market: A study of 'unorganised' agricultural labour in Kerala [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.02.007 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper combines insights from the social structures of accumulation framework, and a carefully delineated understanding of agency, to provide a conceptual and empirical contribution to the field of labour geography. This framework allows for a nuanced understanding of the complexity of the labour process as evinced by in-depth research conducted on the coconut industry in Kerala, India. The Kerala coconut industry has experienced various market changes post-agricultural liberalisation in the mid-1990s. The Government of Kerala has indicated these changes, including increasing imports of palm oil and new trade agreements, have led to a crisis; an issue of considerable importance to the state economy and farmers’ livelihoods. More recent government explanations for the crisis include a labour shortage; particularly an inadequate supply of coconut harvesters. This simplistic explanation (based on neoclassical economic models) masks the complexity of locally constituted labour dynamics in an ‘unorganised’ labour market. A more nuanced understanding reveals that labour market organisation varies by place and difficulties are more adequately explained through changing agrarian relations and the inability to sufficiently control labour. These findings lead to three primary arguments: (1) labour markets are socially and spatially structured and their regulation varies with geographical, historical and political–economic processes in particular places; (2) unorganised labour is able to regulate itself socially and informally, albeit in small ways; and (3) a structural approach is valuable to understand labour agency and the ways informal, unorganised labour is regulated.
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Hospitality unionism and labour market adjustment: Toward Schumpeterian unionism [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.08.008 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper proposes a conceptual model for understanding emerging changes in a North American labour union. UNITE-HERE, largely representing textile and hospitality workers, has been at the forefront of debates on union revitalization in the US and Canada. UNITE-HERE is often characterized as a successful example of North American union renewal, but I argue that this often oversimplifies many complex and contradictory labour strategies. Much of the labour union renewal literature remains prescriptive and is only beginning to escape false binaries such as business versus social unionism, the servicing versus organizing model, or ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ administration. In this paper, I attempt to conceptualize the strategies adopted by the union as they exist in relation to the changing political economic landscape. I characterize the current labour practices as ‘Schumpeterian unionism’, a model which captures the shifting, contradictory, and multi-scalar relationships labour has with the broader community, capital and the state. The model is illustrated with a case study of UNITE-HERE Local 75’s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak through their establishment of a Hospitality Workers Resource Centre to service unemployed workers.
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Labouring geography: Negotiating scales, strategies and future directions [J].https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.10.006 URL 摘要
In our editorial introduction to this themed issue on labour geography, we outline some important on-going debates in the relatively young field of labour geography and suggest future directions for research. First, there is the key question of labour as an active agent in the production of economic landscapes. The agency of labour will likely remain a defining feature of labour geography, but perhaps it is not as important to construct theoretical analytical boundaries as it is to define labour geography as a political project . Second, debates continue surrounding the production of scale and the multiscalarity of organized labour. Third, labour geographers have yet to engage in any sustained fashion with unpacking the complex identities of workers and the way in which those identities simultaneously are shaped by and shape the economic and cultural landscape. Fourth, there is some debate on the costs and benefits of a ‘normative’ labour geography which emphasizes what workers and their organizations ‘could’ or even ‘should’ do. Lastly, we challenge the assumption that labour geographers have not yet asserted themselves as activists in their own right. We conclude the editorial by introducing the articles included in the issue. While these articles may not address every gap in the literature, they do contribute in significant ways to move the labour geography project forward.
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| [70] |
Working culture: The agency and employment experiences of nonunionized workers in the surfboard industry [J].https://doi.org/10.1068/a130330p URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
This paper examines the agency of nonunionized workers employed in the surfboard industry. Informing a labor geography approach with cultural economy theory, the paper contributes to the progression of labor geographies beyond the confines of unionized labor-management relations. Using ethnographic methods with 135 workers across thirty-five workshops and three hubs of production (O'ahu, Hawai'i, southern California, and east coast Australia) I reveal how cultural values and logics powerfully shape labor relations in the surfboard industry. Under labor-intensive systems of craft-based, customized production, workers handle most aspects of business themselves: taking orders, designing, making, and exchanging finished products. Workers use deliberate, targeted actions to create agency and achieve stable, well-paid jobs anchored in vibrant surfing locations. Over the last decade, however, standardization, international competition, and managerial ambitions to upscale for export have instigated pervasive shifts to automated, capital-intensive production. Computer automation is transforming the scope, scale, and conditions of work. Human skills have been replicated, work hours have declined, and wages have stagnated. Against an increasingly precarious employment backdrop, workers' strategies to achieve positive change remain perceptible. But workers' agency is now being hampered by the laid-back, subcultural values pertaining to commercial production and workplace relations.
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| [71] |
Introduction: Space, place and the new labour internationalisms: Beyond the fragments [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00186 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Reviews the book 'Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms,' edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills.
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| [72] |
Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK: Moving beyond the fragments at last [J].https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5661.00035 URL [本文引用: 1] 摘要
Abstract This paper explores the theory and practice of community unionism. It is now widely argued that if trade unions are to reach employees in small workplaces, those on part-time or temporary contracts, and women, black and ethnic minority workers, they need to sustain alliances beyond the walls of the workplace. Increasing the scale of political mobilization in this way can help secure trade union organization amongst new groups of workers while giving unions the power to raise questions of economic and social justice at a wider scale. After summarizing current developments in North America, the paper focuses on the situation in the UK in more detail. By highlighting the pioneering community unionism of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council (BWTUC), the paper explores the implications of community unionism for the future of trade unionism in the UK.
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